The European Central Bank logo is pictured before a news conference on the outcome of the meeting of the Governing Council in Frankfurt, Germany, Jan. 23.The European Central Bank has done its bit to tackle the virus damage, having massively expanded asset purchases, agreed to more flexibility on the share of bonds it buys from each country and buffered borrowing costs for weaker euro zone states such as Italy. Now it’s up to European Union leaders to come together.
Many European governments urge the issuance of a joint debt instrument to face a crisis which Goldman Sachs economists estimate may shrink the euro economy by 9% this year. But Germany and some others oppose that. At stake, says France’s Emmanuel Macron, is the survival of the European project. The crisis, for sure, is far from over.SOFIA CHRISTENSEN/AFP/Getty Images
Many of those frontier economies are in Africa, and are suffering from a toxic combination of tumbling oil and commodity prices, the prospect of the global economy tumbling into recession and weakening currencies which will make servicing external debt ever-more expensive.